


The Precinct Gave To Me

by lanyon



Category: The Unusuals
Genre: F/M, bad santa puns, episodic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the night before Christmas and, all through the Second Precinct, there's drama, bad puns and the case of the stolen Christmas shopping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Precinct Gave To Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).



_(a partridge in a pear tree)_

Eddie Alvarez refers to himself in the third person even in his own head. Eddie Alvarez has never been cool. He’s pale and freckled and he grew his moustache in his freshman year of college in an attempt to give himself gravitas. Somehow, though, Nicole Brandt fell in love with him. 

It helps. She’s a smart and successful woman. (They don’t usually look twice at Eddie Alvarez.) She believes in him. She tells him what she wants for her birthdays and for Christmas and that’s why he’s in Macy’s with a list. Santa’s list, he told her this morning, because she’s naughty and because she’s nice and no one can say that Eddie Alvarez isn’t smooth (at least when there is no one around). 

It’s Christmas Eve and he is late. He’s a December First man, by and large. Hell, he’s a Thanksgiving man. All of his Christmas presents are bought before the tears have dried on the Black Friday cash registers. Not this year, though. No, this year, Eddie Alvarez has been distracted by the blackguards and rapscallions of the Second Precinct. 

_(two turtle doves_

He’s forty-two. He is unprepared for this scenario. 

“It’s the answer to everything,” says Bridget. They’re sitting opposite each other, knees bumping under the table, and everything does not taste like meat, whatever Eric says. 

“It’s what-?” Leo asks.

“Forty-two,” she says (and he doesn’t flinch). “It’s the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.” At his blank expression, she sighs but it’s friendly and not exasperated. She is so patient but it’s easy to be patient when your life isn’t a countdown (Leo’s waiting for the ball to drop and for her to realise that there are issues, and inflatable armchairs and triple, quadruple locks). “I’ll buy you a copy of _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ ,” she says. “You’ll love it.”

It’s strange, he thinks, to look forward to books and movies and Broadway shows in this, his forty-third year.

_(three french hens)_

“It’s not a Level Four, Alvarez.”

“What’s happening, Sarge?”

“Alvarez was shopping.”

“Yeah, that’s not a Level Four. Wait. Has an actual crime been committed?”

“A crime against _fashion_ , maybe.”

“Shraeger, Walsh, you’re not helping.” Sergeant Brown glowers at both. He’s never quite figured if pairing up Jason Walsh and Casey Shraeger was the best move of his career or the worst. He’s delighted they work well together but no one wants codependent cops. Bank and Delahoy skirt the line but Brown wonders, sometimes, at the symbiosis between Walsh and Shraeger. “There has been an actual crime. Alvarez’s Christmas shopping was snatched out of his hand, right outside of Macy’s.”

Walsh bristles.

_(four calling birds}_

“It’s like the way it’s okay to tease your own brother,” says Walsh. “Like. It’s okay if I do it. But god help the man who picks on my kid brother.”

_(five gold rings)_

They’re all in the incident room. Walsh is taking the lead. Brown leans against the doorframe and Cole looks serious, taking notes. 

“What we know,” says Walsh, “is that we’re looking for a male perp, about five foot nine, two-forty pounds and balding, with a white beard.”

Delahoy starts to laugh so much that he’s wheezing. “Shit,” he says. “Alvarez got held up by Santa Claus.”

_(six geese a-laying)_

Getting anything from the MTA is a challenge but Bridget has ways. She’s not a cop but she loves one and her cousin’s wife’s best friend works for the right people and they get the CCTV footage from 34th Street Penn Station within half an hour. Santa Claus went southbound on the 3. He got off at 23rd Street and headed west. 

“Go west, young man,” mutters Walsh at the screen. 

Alvarez is sitting at his desk. His desk is in the hallway because his colleagues decided to put a Christmas tree where he usually sits. Eddie Alvarez takes pranks in good grace (or, at least, until he gets his revenge). He sits and he rearranges his desk so that everything is geometric, sharp lines and right angles. There is nothing acute here, and nothing oblique. His head sinks into his hands. 

_(six geese a-laying)_

Delahoy wonders if this is his last holiday season. He sees Banks fretting and checking his vest and making sure the safety is on his gun about a hundred times over and he thinks that maybe Banks will live for ever.

He doesn’t taste meat anymore but sometimes he gets a strange smell, like lemons. Sometimes, he wakes up on the floor of his bedroom and he’s not sure how he got there, except that his neck is stiff and sore and his muscles all ache. Maybe it’s seizures or maybe it’s nightmares but he’s not going to worry about it till he starts pissing his pants or till he doesn’t know his own name. 

Sometimes, he thinks that if he dies. If this tumour grows and grows until Delahoy is more tumour than brain, Banks will blame himself for not noticing. 

He stands up.

“Where’re you going, man?” asks Banks.

Delahoy blinks. “Out. I need some air.”

Banks nods amiably and Delahoy doesn’t understand this, either; how this person that he loves, who’s so convinced that he’s going to die at any moment, can be so gentle. He doesn’t understand how he can smile.

_(seven swans a-swanning)_

 

>>Second Squad, this is Dispatch. Be on the alert for a man dressed as one of Santa’s little helpers. He’s upsetting the prostitutes on Tenth by shouting ‘ho, ho, ho’ at them and running away.

 

_(eight maids a-milking)_

__

Beaumont is going to go to Midnight Mass with Cole. She thinks it’s a good way to celebrate Christmas, with the stringy, earnest kid who’s saved her life and who follows her lead. Walsh says nothing but sometimes when he says nothing, he says a whole lot. 

_(nine ladies dancing)_

Shraeger likes being on the streets. Not in the hooker sense, though her mother probably doesn’t think being a police officer is any better. She likes interviewing witness and she likes seeing how different people respond to her. 

One of her strengths is how good she is at reading people, from Walsh’s cocky smiles to Alvarez’s slumped posture as they all walk past his desk in the hallway.

“We’ll get it back,” says Shraeger. She doesn’t care much for Nicole but she can respect her, in the way she respects any smart, successful woman. This, though. This isn’t for Nicole. This is for Alvarez. 

_(ten lords a-leaping)_

There’s jewelry, from Cartier, and perfume and the pair of shoes Nicole wanted. There’s a scarf and gloves, which Alvarez chose on his own because it’s New York and winters are cold and everyone likes a nice scarf. There’s make-up, carefully itemised, and there’s a handbag which cost the better part of a month’s wages but Alvarez doesn’t mind because he’s saved for this. He’s saved since last January. 

And now it’s all gone. Snatched from his hand when he stopped to tie his shoelace. He was knocked on his behind by a man with a low centre of gravity and wicked eyes and while Eddie Alvarez was on his ass on the sidewalk on thirty-fourth, the perp got away, engulfed by the Christmas Eve crowds, all heading towards Penn Station. 

_(eleven pipers piping)_

The thing is, there’s always someone who knows someone who saw something. A guy answering to the perp’s description was seen stepping into the Half King to celebrate the spoils of war.

“He’s an amateur,” says Walsh.

“Probably too lazy to do his own Christmas shopping,” says Shraeger.

“Men,” says Beaumont, sniffing. 

“ _Hey_ ,” says Walsh and Cole says nothing (he did his Christmas shopping in November). 

The perp is half-drunk at the bar and Alvarez’s shopping is pooled at the base of the bar-stool. 

“Do we arrest him?” asks Cole. He looks troubled because it’s the season for love and understanding.

“We’re cops,” says Shraeger. “Of course we arrest him.” (She understands criminals better than she understands men, sometimes.)

_(twelve drummers drumming)_

“Did we win?” asks Nicole, curling up against Alvarez on the couch. The fire is roaring and the Christmas tree lights are glittering and there is a pile of presents (only slightly scuffed) under the tree. 

“Did we-?” Alvarez blinks and he’s startled, wondering if she knows what happened to her gifts, but she’s looking up at him with that open smile on her face and he can only smile back. “We win every day,” he says. “We’re the Second Precinct.”

**Author's Note:**

> +Thanks to E for looking this over and for providing the title. Thanks to S, too.  
> +Happy happy Yuletide to Thimblerig. I hope you enjoy this.


End file.
